CHRISTMAS

It is remarkable that a time of celebration, called CHRISTMAS, celebrated by the majority of Christ loving people of the world, is not mentioned in the Christian Bible. Yet millions of people choose this time of the year to exchange gifts, in the name of celebrating the time of the birth of the Lord Jesus. Over the years, millions of professing Christians have been brought up in the belief that the Lord Jesus was born on December 25, but the Bible is completely silent on such an idea. In these last days, the giving of gifts has become nothing more than a commercialised stunt, designed to separate people from their money, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The giving of gifts is supposed to be a reflection of the gift giving by the ‘wise men of the east’, but, when we study the record of the visit of those wise men, we find they did not come to visit Jesus at His birth, but probably not until 40 days afterward.

DO WE NEED TO KNOW CHRIST’S BIRTH DATE?

The simple answer is….no, we do not need to know the date of the birth of the Lord Jesus, for it is of no value to know of it. If the Father had thought we should know the actual date of the birth of His Son, He would have made sure it was in His word of truth, in big letters. But that is not so…there is not one word of it in the whole Bible. On the one occasion on which the actual age of the child Jesus is mentioned, (Luke 2:42) there is no date mentioned and we therefore cannot say with certainty even in which year He was 12 years old. However, for certain reasonable reasons, we can assume He was 12 in the year AD 8, at Passover.

WHY IS HIS BIRTH-DATE HIDDEN ?

The simple answer is that, it is not in His birth that people are to be blessed, but in His death, in His sacrificial death.. People are invited to be baptised into His death, burial and resurrection, and it is because of belief, faith and baptism into His saving Name, that mankind can find salvation from eternal death. This concept is amply demonstrated in the sacrificial deaths of the lambs without spot or blemish on the Passover day each year….the 14th day of the first month.

The Father set in motion for the Children of Israel in Egypt, a means of escape from certain and permanent death, by the sprinkling of the lintels of the doors of their dwelling places with the blood of the sacrificial lamb. The angel of the Lord ‘passed over’ the dwelling places of all who used that shed blood of the lamb for protection from the angel of death. The whole matter of this passing over was a prophecy of things to come, whereby men and women could be saved from eternal death by being related to the shedding of the blood of the final sacrifice, which was to be the Lord Jesus Christ.

COULD HIS BIRTH HAVE BEEN ON DEC. 25?

This question can only be answered from Scripture and we submit to you , our reader, that facts which the Bible presents precludes any possibility of the Lord Jesus having been born on December 25.

We feel rather certain that the Lord Jesus did not commence His ministry until He was about thirty years old, for Luke 3:23 reads, "And Jesus himself began to be about 30 years of age". This was at the time of His baptism and therefore at the actual beginning of His ministry. This is completely in line with Jewish tradition established in the early days of the Children of Israel, when the Father instructed them that men could NOT serve in the Tabernacle until they were thirty years of age.

We know that Christ’s ministry, which was to extend over 7 years, was cut short in the ‘middle of the week’ of the prophecy in Daniel 9:26, or in other words after 3 ½ years. Therefore we MUST assume that Jesus the Christ was ‘about’ 33 ½ years old at His death on the cross.

We also know that His crucifixion was on the 14TH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH, which would have been late in March or early April of the year AD29. Simple arithmetic then establishes that He could not have been born in December at all, but we are led to believe he was probably born somewhere between the first and the 15th day of the 7th month, in Sept/ Oct. of BC. 4.

WHY WAS DECEMBER 25 CHOSEN?

In considering this question, one has to keep in mind that the time came for Rome to welcome EVERY Roman citizen into the new Church established by Constantine, about AD 325 Every citizen of Rome automatically, in theory anyway, became a Christian and brought with him (or her) many of the pagan beliefs. Amongst those beliefs was the worship of the ‘sun god’ and it was on December 25 that Romans celebrated the Mithraic Feast of the sun god (Natalis solis invicti). This celebration day was then selected as a day on which the church of Rome would celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, thus associating the day of the birth of the Son of God with the sun god, a wholly blasphemous act, for which Rome will probably suffer, at the hands of the one whose birth day they celebrate on this particular day.

It was in this manner therefore that Rome remained pagan in a sense, for it continued celebrating a festival on a day which was associated with pagan tradition. Many Romans just went on celebrating the feast of the sun god whilst others gradually introduced another celebration, that of the supposed birth of the Son of God, a celebration which is not mentioned in the Bible and thus is not required of Christians anywhere.

IS GOD PLEASED WITH CHRISTMAS?

We know from the pages of scripture that the Father is NOT at all pleased with human beings worshipping images and idols or other gods, for He demands He be recognised as the ONE GOD. The celebration of Christmas is rooted in paganism and should be shunned by ALL Christians, just as the worship of Mary as QUEEN OF HEAVEN should equally be shunned. All of these celebrations are the products of paganism introduced and maintained in the Church of Rome.

Many will say on reading the words of this pamphlet, "What does it matter on which day we celebrate the birth date of the Lord Jesus?". The answer is clear and simple. If YOUR FAMILY brother was born on September the first, would YOU celebrate his birthday on a heathen festival day in December? The simple answer to a simple question is …NO. Why then celebrate the birth date of the Saviour on a day which was a heathen festival day and NOT His birth date at all?